Diane Beckman
Brigadier General Diane Beckman is the National Security Agency Director and was Colonel John Casey's superior until he was fired in the fourth season finale. She is portrayed by Bonita Friedericy. In the second season, Beckman has revealed that she has spent a significant amount of time and resources over several years prior to the series in hunting Orion, who is the Intersect's chief designer. Despite how Team Bartowski has been disbanded in the season four finale, Beckman has taken an effort to give Chuck Bartowski his Intersect back for him to continue doing spy work. However, this backfires and the Intersect is uploaded into Morgan Grimes instead. Character Information Beckman's primary role on the series is to provide Team Bartowski with intelligence updates on Chuck's flashes and assign their mission objectives, which is often done from a video conference from her office. It is believed that she resides in Dallas, Texas which was referenced in . Most of the time these missions are the result of something Chuck flashes on in the course of his normal day. However on several occasions, Beckman has issued an assignment of her own devising based on events elsewhere, to which Chuck's abilities as the Intersect are particularly well-suited. Beckman herself is seldom personally involved on these assignments and allows the team to proceed on their own. However in , she had benched the team when a flash by Chuck was proven wrong, and in , she had ordered Casey's lock down when his personal vendetta against his former mentor botched a mission. Beckman personally involved herself when Chuck was contacted by Orion after Chuck's rogue search to find him and flew to Burbank herself to debrief the team. This was the first time since the pilot episode as one of the team's supervisors met with them in-person, and also the first time they were directly involved in that episode's mission. Series General Beckman first appeared in , replacing the National Intelligence Director (Wendy Makkena) as overseer of Operation Bartowski. Initially, John Casey and Sarah Walker were to protect Chuck only until the replacement Intersect was back on-line. Sarah and Chuck believed that once this occurred, Chuck would be free to go back to his normal life; however Beckman secretly issued orders to Casey that Chuck was to be killed to prevent the government secrets he retained from falling into the wrong hands. However, after the destruction of that Intersect, this order was rescinded. Additionally, because Operation Bartowski was the only effective weapon against CIA splinter group Fulcrum, Beckman decided that Chuck was far too important and valuable a resource to be released. She therefore blocked his attempts to contact Orion and from having the Intersect removed. Beckman has also made it clear that if Chuck is ever identified, he will be taken into protective custody. General Beckman typically doesn't interfere directly with the team's dynamics. However Sarah's confrontational attitude towards her treatment of Chuck in , led to her concern that Sarah was too emotionally attached to the asset. After Casey attempted to cover for them, she immediately requested he provide an unedited report on Chuck and Sarah's relationship. This led to her reassigning CIA agent Alexandra Forrest as Chuck's CIA handler under directive 49-B. After Forrest subsequently failed to protect Chuck as she lacked Sarah's close personal connection and understanding of him, Beckman was forced to acknowledge that Sarah's feelings for the asset made her the best choice to protect him. After Chuck had failed an operation to locate his father Stephen Bartowski, now revealed as Orion himself, and allowed Fulcrum agent Jill to escape, Beckman decided to pull the plug on Operation Bartowski and ordered Casey and Sarah to take Chuck into permanent custody. However, she reversed this decision when the Intersect was removed from Chuck's head in . In , she offered Chuck a position as an analyst on the Intersect Project. She then allowed Casey to return to his old special ops unit, and reassigned Sarah to the Intersect Project with Intersect expert, Bryce Larkin. Rounding out Beckman's interference with the team, in , she ordered Sarah to apprehend Casey upon learning that he had stolen a valuable item from a CIA facility, and when Casey was broken out, she came to Castle herself once again and ordered Sarah and Chuck to capture him, dead or alive. Despite the three agents eventually working together and taking down the Ring cell that had coerced Casey into stealing from the CIA in the first place, Beckman could not brook Casey's treason, and have him revert into a civilian. Beckman also wished to discuss Sarah's previous request on transferring the latter out of Burbank, as Chuck has needed her less and less. Beckman does not look lightly on the three years and the "untold millions of dollars" spent helping Chuck reach his potential as a spy, but has become understanding of Chuck's "hand-wringing" and "second-guessing" as part of his process. Beckman insists that until watching a video recovered from the Ring, she had no knowledge that Sarah had killed CIA agent Daniel Shaw's wife. In the season three finale, Beckman is before the higher ups of the CIA, who were concerned about the state of Operation Bartowski and Chuck in particular. She gets swept away in a setup staged by a very much alive Shaw. The purpose was to discredit her so that Shaw could take her place at the spies' convention, where the Five Elders of the Ring were going to take over the NSA and the CIA. Team Bartowski arrests the Elders along with Daniel Shaw and his Ring associate Justin Sullivan, leading to the disintegration of the Ring. Chuck later reveals to his sister, Ellie that Beckman was reinstated, and she allowed him to retire from the spy world. Beckman returns in person once more in . Beckman changed the Buy More store into a full-fledged CIA substation, and all of it's new staff are undercover operatives. Sometime after season three and before the fourth season, she had been instructed by the President himself to have Chuck as a priority. In the same episode, she tempers with all of Chuck's job interviews, where all of his employers would either fall asleep on him, never return from being momentarily away, or have him escorted away from the building. Chuck gives up on his search for a new job, until he stumbled across the rebuilt Buy More as it was previously destroyed in the season three finale. Chuck enters the store along with Morgan, and finds the store running with perfection. Chuck decides to apply for a job at the Buy More once again, only to find the new store manager to be Beckman herself as she had welcomed him back. In , when Team Bartowski was being discharged by CIA Agent Clyde Decker, Beckman secretly provided support to the team's cause to rescue Hartley Winterbottom and to save Sarah. Despite the team having been fired from their agencies, Beckman left the Intersect Glasses to Chuck, which Morgan had downloaded instead. Although Beckman has not made any appearances so far in the final season, she is mentioned frequently by the team whenever Carmichael Industries is in dire need of her support during their critical moments. Not much is revealed of Beckman after the resignation of Team Bartowski other than that she had left the Intersect Glasses for Chuck. In , Morgan makes reference to her in which he is "tired of waiting for Beckman". Whether or not this meant she had removed all contact with the team or was just never given the chance by the team to actually contact her is unknown. Personal Life Beckman maintains a somewhat distant relationship with CIA seduction specialist, Roan Montgomery. The two share a relationship for many decades and are still ongoing. It is unknown when they first began their relationship, but the two have already been together since the year 1989, during the riot of the Berlin Wall. The only thing preventing their relationship is that Roan has never preferred to settle down with her and enjoys his career as a spy in the field more. Not much is known of Beckman's past and relationships other than that she, either born or dyed her hair so, was a blonde in the 80's. It is also worth nothing that she maintains a close friendship with former State of Secretary, Condoleezza Rice. Chuck has also jokingly named her as "Roan's girlfriend" in his spy life chart behind his Tron poster. Trivia * The General has a long term relationship with seduction specialist Roan Montgomery. * In the second season, she is the only recurring character not to have a place in the opening credits despite having more screen time than both Ellie and Anna. * In a season two episode, it is mentioned that one of her personal friends is former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. * Beckman was at one point a blonde, it is unsure if she was born with blonde hair, as Roan states that in the 80s, everyone was a "dirty blonde". * Roan was the first character to have ever even indicated and spoken of Beckman's first name, constantly referring to her as Diane in . * Prior to the beginning of the show, the character was originally to be named as General Mary Beckman in several casting lists, and was originally portrayed by Wendy Makkena in the pilot. Category:Characters Category:Main Characters